The 56-year-old bike courier died later that night in hospital from the injuries he suffered.

Friends were saddened by his death, but angered when they discovered many of the items that fell on the street were just dumped in the trash.

Noah Scott, a fellow courier, said there was a "whole bunch of stuff that really shouldn't have been left behind at the scene. A lot of it blood-covered. His keys, the list goes on and on."

CBC News went to the intersection on Friday and found parts of Rankin's broken helmet still in the trash, along with a baseball hat, toque and a cell phone case covered in dried blood.

Another friend, Nicolette Stoyanoff said people "found hand-written notes of his about lists and things. Those are things — that if someone in my family died — I'd want those things you know."

Police say some of Rankin's items were returned to his family and what happened to the rest was a terrible mistake.

"There is a process in which those items are seized and disposed of through proper channels," said Toronto police spokesperson Const. Wendy Drummond. "In this case it would appear there was an error and those items weren't disposed of properly."

"It was an error, there is a proper procedure to dispose of property like this and unfortunately in this case it didn't happen," she said.